August 2015 – Page 6 – Spaceflight Now

New engines arrive at Antares rocket launch site

August 10, 2015 Stephen Clark

The first pair of new Russian main engines for Orbital ATK’s modernized Antares rocket has arrived at the company’s Virginia launch base as engineers prepare to return the commercial booster to flight after a catastrophic failure last year.

OTD…Aug. 10 and STS-105

August 10, 2015 Justin Ray

#OTD in 2001…Discovery launched on an International Space Station crew exchange mission

OTD…Aug. 8 and STS-28 and STS-118

August 8, 2015 Justin Ray

#OTD in 1989…Columbia launched with a classified communications satellite for the Defense Department

OTD…Aug. 7 and STS-85

August 7, 2015 Justin Ray

#OTD in 1997…Discovery launched to deploy and later retrieve the CRISTA-SPAS atmospheric research satellite

NASA buys Soyuz seats as agency presses for commercial crew funding

August 5, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA has signed a $490 million agreement with the Russian government to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station in 2018 and 2019 as a hedge in case of delays to Boeing and SpaceX crew capsules.

NASA space station program manager stepping down

August 5, 2015 William Harwood

Mike Suffredini, manager of NASA’s International Space Station program, is stepping down after 10 years overseeing the lab’s final assembly and transition to post-shuttle operations, the agency said Wednesday. Kirk Shireman, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center, will take over as program manager.

Watch the moon transit the Earth

August 5, 2015 Stephen Clark

Spectacular views from a NOAA space weather observatory show the sunlit far side of the moon crossing the face of the Earth from a distant vantage point a million miles away.

Atlas 5 rocket awarded commercial launch for EchoStar

August 5, 2015 Justin Ray

A powerhouse Internet-from-space communications satellite will be launched from the Cape next year atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, officials announced Wednesday.

NASA picks candidates for new space telescope

August 3, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA has selected three finalists for a new Explorer-class astrophysics satellite mission scheduled to launch by the end of 2020, and two of the proposals aim to fulfill similar goals to an X-ray telescope shelved after cost overruns in 2012.

Orion service module still seen as schedule driver

August 3, 2015 Stephen Clark

The pace of the European Space Agency’s development of a power and propulsion module for NASA’s Orion crew capsule will likely determine when an unpiloted test flight of the spaceship and its heavy-lift rocket will take off, NASA officials said last week.